A Filmmaker's Review: 'I Saw the Light' (2015)

Hank Williams is one of my all-time favourite singers and when I was a slightly younger me, I used to really enjoy watching this film. All in all, it is a fun film about Hank Williams and shows us what his fame would've looked like way back when he was actually alive. Set in the late 40s, this film gives light to the final years of the singer with the deterioration of his marriage to Audrey and his alcoholism getting the better of him. The only problem I had upon the next and more analytic watch of this film is that it really lacks some substance. Yes, it's a fun film - but nothing that you'd say is any good critically and that's how we're going to look at it today.

The filmmaking style doesn't really present any innovation and though it is very good, it's pretty straight forward. It doesn't use the extremely long tracking shots of Get on Up (2013) and it doesn't cut between stories involved like in La Bamba (1987). It's pretty much a straight forward biopic with no real substance to keep audience attention.

Two points for the music. Now, I love hearing the music of Hank Williams and I don't really care who's mouth it comes out of. It is that kind of music that just makes you instantly relax because you know that people still know who Hank Williams is. The music in this film was pretty brilliant and I loved the ending where everyone sang "I Saw the Light" - I don't think that is the way it really happened though. Although, it was pretty accurate to what happened when Hank Williams passed away. I just don't think it quite went like that.

The acting was something that lacked for me. I didn't find Audrey to be enough of a character. It's like she didn't really have an identity even though she too, was a singer/musician. She just seemed a bit crazed and a bit annoying from time to time and that's not really the way I like to think about Audrey so I'm going to say that this wasn't a great effort to play her. As for the character of Hank Williams, I always felt like there was something missing. For some reason, it was a well-acted character but there was something that was missing there and I can't put my finger on what it is.

The storyline could've had more. It only covers the final years of his life, but it could've had stuff to do with his childhood or at least flashbacks. I feel like most of the story was just centred on his drinking habits and there was much more to Hank Williams than that. He was a remarkable man with an incredible talent for country music and yet, most of the film was about him getting really sick from being drunk all the time. I feel like this was accentuated to the point that it became boring to watch. There's so many other things to talk about in his life and I feel like it was unfairly sided towards his drinking.

So, we've covered:

• The filmmaking style being slightly boring and non-innovative even though it was fairly done
• The music being really, really good
• The acting being thoroughly average
• The storyline having very little depth and range, becoming repetitive after a while

To be brutally honest, I think they should make this movie again and focus on how Hank Williams began to make music because that would be far less repetitive and far more interesting. There's so much stuff to cover in his short life but the movie unfairly painted him as an unreliable drunk. We forget that his record label made him work way too hard and he died as a result of that, the drinking was a relaxing way of coping with all of that fame and work. It is a story we'd see in people like Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and many, many more over the years. I feel like even though the music was good, Hank Williams deserved better than this. It was a good attempt at documenting his life but it didn't really materialise very well and I may respect that it is somewhat entertaining but critically, the movie just isn't very good.